Name: To Cook Round Steak
Ingredients: 1 slice of round steak; 1 cup barley; coarse sea salt; black pepper; water

Why it works: Barley and pepper work together. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 897 recipes. Both carry 2-nonenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

To Cook Round Steak

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 300°F (150°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare

Cut the round steak into pieces.
Place the steak pieces in a porcelain kettle.

Bake

Add the barley, salt, pepper, and enough water to cover the ingredients.
Cover the kettle tightly and bake in a slow oven at 300°F (150°C) for three to four hours.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Barley + peppertop 13% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together897 recipes

Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Round steak: Provides the meat, which becomes tender as it cooks slowly in liquid.
Barley: Absorbs liquid and thickens the stew, adding body and a chewy texture.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.